MacKenzie pleated to the sett pics ?

[MacThomas]

Hello,
I'm considering MacKenzie
Has anyone got pics of a (ancient, modern, weathered) Mackenzie pleated to the sett ?
or maybe to the line but different from white
Many thanks in advance

[WillowEstate]

Sorry, my Mackenzie Seaforth is pleated to the white line and my budget PV is pleated to the white grid, so the red verticals are hidden, looks odd.

With a sett as big as a Mackenzie, pleating to the sett would require a lot of material and pleating to anything other than the white line would be a challenge because there are two white lines to each red line, so the sett repeat is red line to red line and the white line to white line is twice the distance from white line to red line. There aren't enough red lines alone unless you use a lot of material again.

[MacThomas]

[With a sett as big as a Mackenzie, pleating to the sett would require a lot of material and pleating to anything other than the white line would be a challenge because there are two white lines to each red line, so the sett repeat is red line to red line and the white line to white line is twice the distance from white line to red line. There aren't enough red lines alone unless you use a lot of material again.[/QUOTE]

It will be for an 8 yard tank!

[chasem]

I'm going to elaborate on Willow's comment.

The amount of material between the stripes that get pleated is what's meant by the amount of material "going into" the pleats of the kilt.

Kilt tartan often has somewhere around a 6-9" sett repeat (one element to the next appearance of that same element).* That means that, when pleating to the stripe, there is on average somewhere between 1/2" and 1" material showing in the pleat and then somewhere between 5.5" and 8.5" hidden for a depth of 2.25"-4.25".

The MacKenzie tartan is often a larger sett size. Spit-balling, we'll say 12-15". So if you were to pleat the MacKenzie to the red stripe you would have somewhere between 11" and 14.5" hidden within the pleats - which is a whole lot of wool to have hidden behind the pleats. As a result, you would use far more material for the same number of pleats, or fewer pleats with the same amount of material.

If your sett has a 6" repeat, you can get 5-6 pleats per yard. With our 12"+ MacKenzie you could only get up to 3 pleats per yard. This is why the MacKenzie is often pleated to the white stripe as there are two white stripes per sett repeat, which brings our pleats to every 6-8" instead of every 12-15".



The main takeaway from this is that it would take more than 8 yards to get an "8 yard" MacKenzie pleated to the sett with pleats the size you typically find on an "8 yard kilt".

Does that help make sense of Willow's comment?



*Bear in mind these numbers are all rough figures for estimation - there are so many varying sett sizes, I'm just trying to help you visualize here.

[Stephan]

Here's an image of a kilt that I've been working on....it's a Mackenzie pleated to the sett, 8 yards. Your question could definitely benefit from input by Barb T (kiltmaker, frequent contributor). I managed to pleat to the sett by 'cheating' the pleats: instead of using the sett ( a huge 12 inches) as my guide as to where every pleat should be sewn, I picked up elements that occur more than once within the sett, like a colour block (blue, green, black) or even a strip. If I had pleated the kilt using the 'true' sett, I'd have ended up with, maybe, 15 pleats making each pleat too wide for it to be visually pleasing. I ended up with 25 in this one. From the outside, the kilt looks and feels great. On the inside, the pleats are of differing sizes.

Stephan

[MacThomas]

Many thanks for your information
this will be useful when I order it but still don't know whether it will be ancient, modern or weathered. For me it depends also on the back look which depends on the pleating and therefore my initial inquiry.

[Stephan]

MacThomas,

Here's another idea you might consider as an option for pleating: I quickly measured what the reoccuring repetition would be if you chose to have the kilt pleated in the Mackenzie tartan to an alternating red AND white stripe....call it ketchup and mustard!!! The repeat in this case seems to be 9 inches...that's actually not too bad! Once you've decided on whether you prefer weathered, ancient or modern colouring and if you request it, any kilt maker will gladly put together 'test pleats' to show you what options might be available for pleating. Actually, I've got a piece of weathered Mackenzie that I can put a few test pleats in just to show what a kilt might look like pleated to the alternating red and white and I'll post it here for fun...stay tuned!